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Remember the other day when I linked you to BLDG BLOG? You need to go check out a post on there with plot ideas for Ghostbusters III. I have to say, I would watch this so hard:
It’s 1997. NYNEX is on the verge of being purchased by Bell Atlantic, after which point it will be dissolved in all but name. But all hell starts breaking loose. Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don’t stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves – but it’s the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.
Every once in a while, though, something genuinely bad happens: someone answers the phone… and they go a little crazy.
Thing is – spoiler alert – halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn’t a phone system at all: it’s the embedded nervous system of an angel – a fallen angel – and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.
Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first…
I don’t think it’d be a bad movie, actually.
It would be a fantastic movie.
My buddy Ian sent this to me, saying, “This is one of those things that should have been invented a long time ago…” That might be the understatement of all time. This is the greatest invention ever:
Seriously, it’s up there with DVRs and EZ-Pass, the 2 previous greatest inventions ever.
Heh: ObamasPlanForGayRights.com
I’m frustrated with this Administration’s inaction on gay rights, but I haven’t yet run out of patience. Andrew has, for which I don’t blame him in the least; it’s a little more Real for him, since he may well be deported in a few years if the federal policy on HIV-positive immigration and civil marriage doesn’t change.
This president, however, is the shrewdest politician of my lifetime, and has the opportunity to be the greatest president in our country’s history. I cannot believe that he personally intends to screw gay people out of their rights; he is a Democrat, after all. He’s waiting for the right time. Why that right time isn’t now, with the right-wing elements reeling and incapable of resisting, I don’t know.
I’m not even convinced that he really believes that marriage should be “between a man and a woman.” Even if he does, I think he’ll come around on it, particularly as more Americans do the same.
Today’s Dilbert slayed me, so I’m sharing it with you. Enjoy.
I ambled over to TweetPsych.com and got a nifty
psychological analysis of my tweets. Things it revealed:
You often talk about the physical characteristics of things.
Uh…okay. I’m not sure what this means. If you’re talking about a thing, seems like the physical characteristics of it would come up.
You talk about yourself a lot.
Obviously. I’m as self-centered as anybody. Also, it’s Twitter. It doesn’t lend itself well to profound theological thought, unless Nietsche came back to life.
You express plenty of negative emotions.
I’m 30-something American male. It’s how we roll.
You often make references to physically upward movement. Like upstairs, climb, etc.
I don’t know what the hell this is about. Oh wait, yes I do: I have a secret life as an escalator salesman. Subconsciously, it must come out in my Twitterin’.
Mike “Gabe” Krahulik doesn’t like Tiger Woods Golf (scroll down to his entry, under Jerry’s).
I don’t know why I keep buying Tiger Woods games every year. …Tiger is essentially an RPG. That is to say as you play, your skills improve and you get better equipment. That’s just not what I want from a golf game. Starting Tiger Woods is like walking on to the golf course wearing vendor trash and everyone else is in their tier 8 gear. You can not compete unless you put the time in. What I want is a golf game that’s more like Halo or any other shooter. What I mean is that everyone has essentially the same character and what determins the winner is the players skill.
Personally, I enjoy the heck out of the “RPG” aspect of Tiger Woods; my only real complaint is that it’s possible to get your player SO good that you can do things like shoot a 52 at Pebble Beach, which is just ridiculous, although part of the problem is that game is too easy. That seems like a self-evident statement, but the problem is that once your player gets good, the possibility of making mistakes is just removed. Screw up a little on the timing of the drive? No problem, your player is 110% in the category, so it still went 370 yards, straight down the fairway. Same thing with putting and chipping. My Tiger Woods player hasn’t failed to eagle a par 5 in recent memory. Why? Because I’m on the green in 2. And not “on the green 75 feet from the hole” 2. I mean, it was a 600 yard par 5, I drove the ball 380 yards, then 7-ironed it the remaining 220 and stuck it 12 feet from the pin. My guy gets a hole in one every 2 or three rounds.
Since you never make mistakes, the mental aspect of golf is pretty much removed. Ugly dogleg? Doesn’t matter, my player hits a 9 iron nearly 200 yards. I can go right over the trees. Lots of water around the hole? Not to worry. My shots never vary more than about a half-degree from the point of aim. Let’s put the brains back in the game! Golf shots should occasionally go off-course, something that you’ll have to account for when lining up a shot.
The other problem with the “RPG” aspect is that you start the game fully capable of shooting in the high 70s, particularly if you’ve played it before. What I’d prefer to see is starting the game shooting like 109, losing balls, occasionally failing to drive it past the ladies tee and then having to play the remainder of the hole with your schlong hanging out of your shorts. Just like real life!
As you play, you develop skills, so after a few dozen rounds you find yourself creeping into the low 90s, then the 80s, entering a few amateur tournaments, and then finally getting good enough to enter the professional stuff.
I realize that not everybody wants a career mode that doesn’t start them off as a semi-decent professional; I’m saying the option should be there. It wouldn’t be hard, really. A few more lines of code.
Gabe’s complaint seems to be that he can’t just play the game without going through the career. I don’t have the latest version of Tiger Woods yet, but can’t you just play? You don’t have to do career mode, right? Why can’t he just fire up a match and play as Tiger Woods?
I want to see everyone start with a character that has the same basic skills. Then give everyone the same number of points that they can invest in their character to improve things like driving or putting. Then that’s it, no more points no more stat upgrades. Now you’re talking about creating a custom build for your character and then matching your skills with that build up against everyone else.
This does have merit. I’d definitely enjoy a game where you spend a few minutes outfitting your player with boss points and then go up against somebody. (I’d spend almost nothing on driving, since it’s been well documented that you drive for show, but putt for dough.)
Immagine if everytime you tackled a guy in Madden your players got stronger. Then immagine [sic] you could buy footballs that flew further or were easier to catch. Sure some people might like it but most fans would say “this isn’t football”. Well that is essentially how Tiger Woods works and I guess I’m just tired of it.
But Madden, as well as NCAA Football, include this as an option! You can make a player, have a career, and slowly build him into an MVP/Heisman winner! Also, you can just fire up the game and play. I can’t imagine that EA took this ability out of Tiger Woods Golf, so I’m not entirely sure why Gabe can’t do it.
Huh. Another older woman gettin’ it on with a teenaged boy. Happens all the time, let’s open the article to see if she’s hot OH GOD MY EYES
(Mother I’d Like to Run From, if you couldn’t figure it out.)
As a father who is also a geek, I have a question for nurses, childcare professionals, physicists, etc. Can someone explain to me why I can’t warm breast milk in a microwave?
Sarah and I got into a small argument the other day, and I acceded to her wishes, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. When you heat a liquid in a microwave, it tends to heat unevenly. This is why anything you heat in a nuker usually have to be stirred halfway through. So when heating breast milk, you end up with small sections of the milk that still cold, and sections that are infant-searingly hot. Obviously this is bad. The recommended technique is that you heat up a bunch of water in the microwave, and then sit the bottle of milk in it for a few minutes to warm it.
I did that the other day, and left the bottle in for longer than anticipated; the outside got quite warm, while the inside was sort of tepid. So: I shook it up. This caused the colder milk in the middle to mix with the hotter milk on the outside, bringing the whole thing to just about body temperature.
Why can’t I do that when microwave heating? Throw the thing in the nuker for 5 seconds and then shake the bejebus out of it. I don’t stick it in Josephine’s mouth without testing it on my arm either way, so what’s the problem? Why can’t I do this? Why?
One interesting side effect of my current diet is that it’s gotten me cooking more frequently. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but it’s hard to find the time, particularly if one works all day. If you want to cook anything complicated, it can take an hour or more of preparation; if you don’t get home until 6, suddenly you’re not eating until 7:30, which is unacceptable when small children are involved. It’s no wonder busy families tend to eat fast food, or ready-made meals in boxes from Stouffer’s.
When dieting, though, the easiest way to fill up without taking in a lot of calories is to eat vegetables. Salads are highly recommended, but boring; after a while I long for something with a little more flavor. Cooked vegetables are the next best thing, but the “vegetarian” ready-made meals you find are horrifible. The solution? Slice up your own veggies and throw ’em in a hot pan. A cabinet full of tasty spices also makes a big difference; curry powder, for example, makes anything, even plain cauliflower, into Special South Asian Cuisine. Yum.
It also helps having Sarah home with the kids for the summer, because it means she can get a head start on dinner. She’s awfully good about timing it such that I can come home, quickly slice some veggies and fry ’em up, and she’s already got a low-calorie meat like pork or chicken a-roasting. (Last night was pork tenderloin, and it was better than sex.) It seems to be working so far; in the first 9 days of my diet, I went from 271 pounds to 261. To be sure, a lot of that is the heralded “water weight,” but hey, I’ll take it.
Now I just need to start going to the gym. I’ll, uh, get right on that.
If you’ve an eye for pleasant vistas and fine architecture, it’s time you checked out BLDGBLOG. It’s full of interesting tidbits about urban planning and building design, and the occasional poignant observation:
Malfunctioning fire alarms going off inside foreclosed homes have become a major distraction for fire departments in suburban Arizona, according to ABC15 News. Fire fighters, however, cannot legally enter a property unless they see smoke or have obtained the owner’s permission. But in an era of bank ownership and rampant foreclosure, even finding the owners can take weeks.
The result is that “neighbors have to listen to the alarm until the battery dies, which can take days.”
First we were surrounded by ruins, and then those ruins began to sing.
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